Two Years On: A Sofa, and Videos from the Client
Customer videos of Designs Weekly Refresh
At Designs Weekly Refresh, we do not think an order ends when the truck drives away. Before a customer buys, we try to understand what they really need. We help them choose the right piece. Then we leave them alone. After delivery, we come back to see how it is doing. Sometimes for years. It is not a policy. It is just how we work.
Two years ago we received an order like that: one custom sofa for a private studio, in one of the more expensive parts of the city. The customer was the manager of a music producer you have probably heard of. The order was simple, and it went well from start to finish.
The producer has been making records since the early 2010s, and he has never really stopped. The studio is where he works. He bought the sofa to sit on, not to photograph.
Then, a few weeks ago — more than two years after the delivery — his manager wrote to us. We had not spoken since the sofa arrived. He sent a video. The sofa was still in use every day, he said, and it was in better condition than he expected. He did not have to do that.
The video also showed us the room. He is glad to show it: the wall first, then the shelves, then the small objects on them.
The wall
It is the first thing you see. Framed records hang side by side. They run from one end of the wall to the other, and then around the corner.
Two of them are easy to read. Travis Scott's Astroworld — No. 1 in August 2018, back at No. 1 that December, six times platinum now. And Polo G's Hall of Fame — No. 1 in its first week in June 2021, with 143,000 units that week (sales and streams together), his first No. 1 album, and 102 weeks on the chart.
The others are harder to read, and just as real. White frames along the top, each with a small No. 1 at the bottom. Gold and platinum records in black frames below. One multi-platinum award has a record on each side of a portrait. One group photo has green chart stickers on it.
None of it is decoration. These are not reprints, and they are not framed posters. They are the real RIAA certifications and Billboard awards — the awards a record receives when it sells millions of copies. You can check every one of them.
We spend a lot of time in showrooms. We are used to seeing furniture photographed in front of a wall like that. We are not used to seeing our own work in front of one.
The sofa
It is the plainest thing in the room: fabric, a low back, a deep seat, and a few parts joined into one long sofa.
Two years later, nothing has lost its shape. The cushions are still full, and the seams are still tight. In a room like that, it does not stand out. That is what we wanted. You want it to look right on the first day. What matters is the third year.
We do not build for showrooms. We build for rooms where someone stops working for ten minutes, rests their feet, and comes back the next morning. Two years later, it is still the same sofa.
In closing
Two years ago we delivered one sofa to a private studio. A few weeks ago a video arrived: the same sofa, the same room, in front of a wall of records.
That is the kind of review we hope for. Not the photo on the day of delivery — the third year.
What this article shows. The only product we supplied for this room is the sofa and its cushions. Everything else that appears in this article and in the video it refers to — the throw and the scarves on the sofa, the rugs, the lighting, the audio equipment, the books, the records on the wall — belongs to the client. Any third-party brand that happens to be visible is unrelated to us and appears incidentally.
The two videos in this post are the same files the client sent us. We have not edited them or changed what they show.
This article was edited with the help of AI. It may still contain mistakes. If you find one, please contact us, and we will correct it.
